


If Venus shows all phases like the moon

by prufrocks



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Gen, Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-07
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 20:47:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1124226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prufrocks/pseuds/prufrocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You followed this troll that you’re a bit pink for into a damp, dark cave to deal with a prank, and that had seemed like a great idea at the time; but now that you’re here, you’re not sure it’s the dampness or the darkness that you should be worried about, and you’re also no longer sure that this was a prank to begin with.</p>
<p>A horror vignette, with supernatural elements, and a hint of romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Venus shows all phases like the moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [letmetellyousomething](https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyousomething/gifts).



> Perhaps don't read this in the dark. 
> 
> Fic title from the song Ptolemy Was Wrong, by The Ocean.

The inside of your mouth is bleeding, a tiny slice under your bottom lip, and you gnaw at it with your teeth and tongue while your eyes readjust to the lantern-light that flickers along the cave walls. You must have bitten it when you stumbled into the cave, you think, or when you tripped back on the path in the woods.

“Hurry up,” calls Aradia from a dozen meters ahead of you, and you curse your poor luck and jog up to meet her. She barely spares you a glance as you catch up, merely nodding towards the cave walls, which, in the flickering light, you can see are streaked with teal.

“She came through here, then,” you say, laying your fingertips to the rock. It’s cold and slightly damp to the touch, but whether that’s from blood or from the steady drip of water down from the ceiling of the cave, you aren’t sure. Aradia drops to her knees, sweeps her hands around on the ground. She looks for clues in dirt, in footprints, in things left behind; you look for clues in the way even the taste of the air has changed inside this cave. While she’s busy on the ground, you let your eyes take in the streaks on the wall; they stop abruptly halfway up the cave, above your eye level. 

Terezi is not that tall. 

Something else catches your eye in the lamplight, but when you let your eyes flicker towards it, there’s nothing there but shadows.

You keep looking, above the bloodstain, until you see them- parallel lines along the ceiling. “Aradia,” you say, motioning up when she lifts her head.

“Give me a boost,” she says, and you oblige, kneeling down so she can stand on your thigh. You shudder a bit when she puts her foot on your leg, but whether that’s from nerves or from the sudden chill that whispers through the cave, you aren’t sure. She raises the lantern with her left hand, runs her soft grey fingers along the ceiling with her right, skirting over crags and jutting rocks, moving gracefully around the stalactites. She frowns, and is beautiful as she does so. “These are tracks,” she says quietly. “From someone dragging their horns along the ceiling. Someone-”

“-large,” you finish, meeting her eye as she looks down at you. She nods, and steps down from your thigh.

“Did you notice how the stains on the wall, they’re too high up to be from Ter- from her just walking along this floor,” you say, the words coming out in a jumble, unsure why you can’t spit out Terezi’s name. You are suddenly shy in front of Aradia. She is much better at this than you. Braver. You can still put clues together though.

“You’re saying she was carried.”

“Slung over his shoulder, from the looks of it,” you say, your confidence slowly coming back. You still feel somewhat shaken, and the flickering shadows don’t help. 

Aradia is still staring at the ceiling, and you watch her gaze glide along it towards the far end of the cave, towards the darkness. “The tracks go that way,” she says, pointing into the shadows, and before you can tell her that you’re afraid, she starts to head in the same direction.

You followed this troll that you’re a bit pink for into a damp, dark cave to deal with a prank, and that had seemed like a great idea at the time; but now that you’re here, you’re not sure it’s the dampness or the darkness that you should be worried about, and you’re also no longer sure that this was a prank to begin with. It had certainly seemed prank-like when Terezi disappeared into the woods from the campsite, leaving nothing but footprints all the way to the mouth of this cave. The two of you volunteered to follow her because the two of you were the amateur detectives, always playing at solving crimes in the past, but this feels different, very suddenly.

You hear a noise behind you, a footstep or a rockfall, and when you turn back to investigate you’re hit with an overpowering stench, with notes of sulphur and battery acid stinging your nose, your lips. It blinds you and you call out, stumbling backwards, nearly running Aradia over, and she grabs you and hauls you back up, her sweater over her mouth and nose, her eyes furious in the dim light. She’s waving the lantern towards whatever it was that was behind you, shouting, but as the light dances from one wall to the other, you can both see that there’s nothing there. 

The stench is gone as quickly and totally as it came. If it weren’t for Aradia’s sharp claws still pinching into your shoulder, you wouldn’t be sure it had even come at all. There’s something damp on your lips- blood, from the cut that had been there earlier, you’re sure of it, but it doesn’t taste quite right. It tastes almost rotten.

Aradia’s face is ashen, lips pinched. She looks confused, rattled. Scared. You’re not quite sure how to process this, but before you can think about it too hard you hear a strange noise, deeper in the shadows in front of you. It sounds like laughter, but it’s stretched, almost waxy. It’s quiet, but it still hurts your ears.

Some part of your brain still wants to try to use reason and logic in this situation, and you take a deep breath to calm yourself down, but the burst of air that hits your lungs is filled with the sulphur stench again, and you can’t help but retch into Aradia’s shoulder. Something is moving in the shadows behind her, but you can’t get enough air to tell her to watch out; it looks like a man, but with a jerk to the motion of his long limbs, and horns that reach up and scrape the ceiling. You squeeze your eyes shut and open them again and he is gone, along with the stench.

“Aradia,” you croak, but she’s looking past you, her eyes hollow.

“Jane,” she says, and your heart sinks. “Don’t turn around, just keep walking forward, please.”

“Is it behind me?” you ask, and she nods, taking several slow steps backwards, waiting for you to catch up. You wish you had a token to keep you brave: a magnifying glass, a mustache on a string, anything silly to hold onto, but all you have is Aradia and her sweater and her lantern, swinging from her outstretched hand. Aradia, who is always limitless calm until she snaps, gentle and fierce, allowing you to burrow your way into her thinly-stretched bravery. It hits you suddenly, then, and- “Goat horns,” you say, and her eyes flick to you and then back to the shadows behind you. “There’s a legend about these woods, the ghost story Dave was telling earlier. A half-man, half-goat, smells like the devil’s ass, you heard it, right?”

She nods slowly. You back her up so she’s against a wall, and then slam your own back against the rock next to her. 

“Terezi was lured here. She must have smelled it or something.”

“That’s smart,” Aradia says. “Luring victims into a cave. Then when one goes, their plucky detective friends will chase after them, and you get three meals for the price of one.”

Whatever was behind you isn’t there anymore, and neither you nor Aradia can stop your eyes from darting into every crevice, every cranny, every shadow along the walls of the cave. The waxy, mutated laugh returns, and both your heads whip to the left, Aradia swinging the lantern towards it, and at the same time the sulphur smell is back, but from the right, and you double over and press your face into Aradia’s shoulder. She’s coughing, waving the lantern back and forth, shouting at whatever it is. You see a shadow moving in front of you, two long, curving horns rising out of its head, and it jolts back into the darkness. The stench is almost overpowering, now, and then, very suddenly, the whole cave becomes eerily silent.

That’s when Aradia drops the lantern, and you are plunged into pitch black darkness as well.

“We have to get out, Jane,” she says, and then she’s pulling you away from the cave wall that you’re clutching. Her gait is hurried, but halting, and you know her eyes are trying just as hard as yours to adjust to the deep, inky darkness. You try to grab for her sweater again but she’s going too fast.

“Slow down, Aradia, I’m stumbling,” you say, finally catching up to her- but right as you do, you realize that her sweater is all wrong, and then you hear her screams from far behind you, and you are keenly aware of just how wrong this place smells. The cut in your mouth is bleeding again, and this time you do nothing to stop it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was roughly based off the legend of the [goatman](http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Anasi's_Goatman_Story). Goats all around, really.
> 
> I prefer not to receive constructive criticism. Thank you for reading.


End file.
